[HN Gopher] In the Beginning Was the Command Line (1999)
___________________________________________________________________
In the Beginning Was the Command Line (1999)
Author : conanxin
Score : 281 points
Date : 2024-07-27 06:25 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (web.stanford.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (web.stanford.edu)
| mxwsn wrote:
| This essay by Neal Stephenson was first published in 1999.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Beginning..._Was_the_...
|
| The analogy of OS as cars (Windows is a station wagon, Linux is a
| tank) is brought up in the recent Acquired episode on Microsoft,
| where Vista was a Dodge Viper but Windows 7 was a Toyota Camry,
| which is what users actually wanted.
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| Windows XP would probably be an old 1970s Volvo that is still,
| somehow, running in all kinds of places otherwise forgotten by
| the waking world.
| homarp wrote:
| like https://www.osnews.com/story/140301/no-southwest-
| airlines-is... :)
| heraldgeezer wrote:
| OS/2 also! :D
| johnohara wrote:
| Mostly in Oregon, Northern CA, and parts of Washington. But
| parts are increasingly hard to find.
| GrumpyYoungMan wrote:
| And Neal Stephenson acknowledged it was obsolete in 2004:
|
| " _I embraced OS X as soon as it was available and have never
| looked back. So a lot of 'In the beginning was the command
| line' is now obsolete. I keep meaning to update it, but if I'm
| honest with myself, I have to say this is unlikely._"
|
| https://slashdot.org/story/04/10/20/1518217/neal-stephenson-...
|
| But people still dredge this quarter century old apocrypha up
| and use it to pat themselves on the back for being Linux users.
| " _I use a Hole Hawg! I drive a tank! I 'm not like those other
| fellows because I'm a real hacker!_"
| Phiwise_ wrote:
| "Obsolete" is too strong a word, I think. OSX isn't an
| evolution of the Macintosh's operating system; That'd be
| Pink, which was even mentioned, and it crashed and burned.
| OSX was far closer to a Linux box and a Mac box on the same
| desk, therefore the only change really needed is to replace
| mentions of Unix or specifically Linux with Linux/OSX as far
| as the points of the piece are concerned. If Jobs had paid
| Torvalds to call OSX "Apple Linux" (Or maybe just called it
| Apple Berkeley Unix) for some reason this would be moot.
|
| I also primarily use Windows and don't have a dog in the
| fight you mentioned. I might actually dislike Linux more than
| OSX, though it has been quite a while since I've seriously
| used the one-button OS.
| wpm wrote:
| macOS shares zero lineage with Linux, which itself shares
| zero lineage with the UNIX derivatives. It would make zero
| sense for Apple to call macOS "Apple Linux" when it doesn't
| use the Linux kernel. Mac OS X is closest to a NeXTStep box
| with a coat of Mac-like polish on top. Even calling it
| "Apple Berkeley Unix" wouldn't make sense, because the XNU
| kernel is a mish mash of both BSD 4.3 and the Mach kernel.
|
| Linux and the UNIX derivates are not even cousins. Not
| related. Not even the same species. They just both look
| like crabs a la
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation.
| 13of40 wrote:
| The crabs analogy isn't a good one, because they evolve
| independently to play well in a common environment.
| GNU/Linux is a rewrite of Unix that avoids the licensing
| and hardware baggage that kept Unix out of reach of non-
| enterprise users in the 80s and early 90s.
| Phiwise_ wrote:
| >OS X is closest to a NeXTStep
|
| This is already in the piece. Why waste time repeating
| it?
| dylan604 wrote:
| Because the person they replied to used a term like Apple
| Linux which is ridiculous. So somebody on the internet
| was wrong and needed to be corrected
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| > OSX was far closer to a Linux box and a Mac box on the
| same desk
|
| Setting aside the "more BSD/Mach than Linux", OS X pressed
| a lot of the same buttons that BeOS did: a GUI system that
| let you drop to a Unix CLI (in Be's case, Posix rather than
| Unix, if we're going to be persnickety), but whose GUI was
| sufficiently complete that users rarely, if ever, _had_ to
| use the CLI to get things done. Folks who love the CLI (hi,
| 99% of HN!) find that attitude baffling and shocking, I 'm
| sure, but a lot of people really don't love noodling with
| text-based UIs. I have friends who've used the Mac for
| decades -- and I don't mean just use it for email and web
| browsing, but use it for serious work that generates the
| bulk of their income (art, desktop publishing, graphic
| design, music, A/V editing, etc.) -- who almost never open
| the Terminal app.
|
| > though it has been quite a while since I've seriously
| used the one-button OS
|
| Given that OS X has supported multi-button mice since 2001,
| I certainly believe that. :)
| giantrobot wrote:
| > Given that OS X has supported multi-button mice since
| 2001, I certainly believe that. :)
|
| And since MacOS 8 before that...
| Phiwise_ wrote:
| >Given that OS X has supported multi-button mice since
| 2001, I certainly believe that.
|
| Just a joke, mate.
| llm_trw wrote:
| Given what OS X has become it's un-obsoleted itself again.
|
| It's kind of ironic that you're using a post from 20 years
| ago to invalidate an essay from 25 years ago, about an OS
| that's been substantially dumbed down in the last 10 years.
|
| Bad corporate blood will tell.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| In what way has it been "dumbed down?" I use modern MacOS
| as a Unix software development workstation and it works
| great- nothing substantial has changed in 20 years other
| than better package managers. I suppose they did remove X11
| but it's trivial to install yourself.
| isametry wrote:
| Not GP, but usually when people talk about the "dumbing
| down" of macOS, they refer to new apps and GUI elements
| adopted from iOS.
|
| macOS as an operating system has been "completed" for
| about 7 years. From that point, almost all additions to
| it have been either focused on interoperation with the
| iPhone (good), or porting of entire iPhone features
| directly to Mac (usually very bad).
|
| Another point of view is that macOS is great, but all
| ideas that make it great come from 20 years ago, and have
| died at the company since then. If Apple were to build a
| desktop OS today, there's no way they would make it the
| best Unix-like system of all time.
| layer8 wrote:
| > Another point of view is that macOS is great, but all
| ideas that make it great come from 20 years ago, and have
| died at the company since then.
|
| This also applies to Windows, by the way (except it's
| more like 20-30 years ago).
| jthoward64 wrote:
| Whereas Linux never stopped coming up with new ideas, but
| doesn't have the manpower to implement them
| bear141 wrote:
| Just using at a barely advanced level for 20 years or so
| as I do, the other comment was correct in that it is the
| changes that have seemingly been made to make it more
| familiar to iOS users and "idiot proof".
|
| Mainly slowly hiding buttons and options and menus that
| used to be easily accessible, now require holding
| function or re-enabling in settings or using terminal to
| bring them back.
| fake-name wrote:
| OS X started going down hill as soon as they replaces
| spaces and expose with mission control.
| samatman wrote:
| I also "embraced OS X as soon as it was available". My
| first Linux install was Yggdrasil, but I cut my teeth on
| SPARC stations. I respected two kinds of computer: Unix
| workstations, and the Macintosh.
|
| So when Apple started making workstations, I got one. I've
| been a satisfied customer ever since.
|
| I have no idea whatsoever what dumbing down you're
| referring to. The way I use macOS has barely changed in the
| last ten years. In fact, that's a major part of the appeal.
| rewgs wrote:
| I will never understand the sentiment that macOS has been
| "dumbed down."
|
| It's a zsh shell with BSD utils. 99% of my shell
| setup/tools on Linux just work on macOS. I can easily
| install the gnu utils if I want 99.9% similarity.
|
| I very happily jump between macOS and Linux, and while the
| desktop experience is always _potentially_ the best on
| Linux (IMO nothing compares to hyprland), in practice macOS
| _feels_ like the most polished Linux distro in existence.
|
| Do people just see, like, some iOS feature and freak out?
| This viewpoint always seems so reactionary. Whereas in
| reality, the macOS of the past that you're pining for is
| still right there. Hop on a Snow Leopard machine and a
| Ventura machine and you'll see that there are far, _far_
| more similarities than differences.
| j2kun wrote:
| I stopped using Mac because of the planned obsolescence,
| which is a huge problem with machines even 4 years old.
| Can't even update those BSD utils anymore because you
| can't update the OS, because you don't have the latest
| hardware, because you don't want to spend 2k more to get
| back the basics you had already paid for.
| kstrauser wrote:
| MacOS Sequoia supports every computer 4 years old. Almost
| no apps or CLI programs will absolutely require it unless
| they're specifically invented to support some brand new
| feature. I'm running it on my 2018 Mac Mini.
|
| If you wish Apple supported computers longer, fine. I'd
| personally disagree because I've had wonderful luck with
| them supporting my old hardware until said hardware was
| so old that it was time to replace it anyway, but would
| respect your different opinion. Don't exaggerate it to
| make a point though.
| gumby wrote:
| > _I keep meaning to update it, but if I 'm honest with
| myself, I have to say this is unlikely._"
|
| IME he hates to revisit anything he's already written so this
| claim is polite but implausible.
| eikenberry wrote:
| Neal gave up on Linux because he wasn't a developer. He
| couldn't take advantage of the freedoms it provided and it
| worked the same for him as any proprietary OS would. I.E. he
| had the excuse that programming is hard, a specialty that
| requires much practice. This is an ongoing issue with free
| software and is why it is niche... it primarily appeals to
| software developers as they are the only ones that can take
| advantage of the freedoms it provides and are the ones that
| truly sacrifice that freedom when they use a non-free OS.
| pacaro wrote:
| Yeah, this is basically my take too. I had a hardcopy of
| this sometime between 99 and 02, and read it several times
|
| At the time I was an embedded developer at Microsoft and
| had been a Windows programmer in the mid 90s. It was pretty
| clear that there was some dunning Krueger going on here.
| Neal knew enough about tech to be dangerous, but not really
| enough to be talking with authority
| simonmysun wrote:
| I feel now the different way. Linux is never that much more
| powerful than other OS. It felt more like a tractor 10 years
| ago and now it is a good alternative to "Toyota Camry" with
| pretty good user experience.
|
| Meanwhile Windows has become those cars with two 27" screen as
| dashboard, which has bad user experience and full of
| advertisements.
| davidgerard wrote:
| The actual comparison is that Vista was the Ford Edsel
| (hilarious and widely-mocked failure) but 7 was the Ford Comet
| (a huge hit).
|
| It's a close analogy, because the Comet was actually the next
| model of Edsel. They just changed the branding. Same with Vista
| to 7.
| justin66 wrote:
| > recent Acquired episode on Microsoft, where Vista was a Dodge
| Viper but Windows 7 was a Toyota Camry, which is what users
| actually wanted.
|
| I assume if anyone associated with Microsoft compared Vista to
| anything other than an abject failure, it's because they are -
| at best - broken or defective people who were involved in the
| creation of Vista, and therefore not objective and not to be
| trusted in any way.
|
| Dodge Viper? WTF?
| throwawaydummy wrote:
| Doge Vipers get a bad rep even in need for speed lol but idk
| enough about cars to know why
| throwawaydummy wrote:
| I didn't know myself let alone computers but anyone know why
| Vista and Windows 8 got such bad reps?
| yetihehe wrote:
| My favourite part explaining how unix/linux users feel regarding
| windows: 'THE HOLE HAWG OF OPERATING SYSTEMS'.
|
| This essay should be a mandatory reading for all CS students and
| anyone wanting to call himself hacker.
| raldi wrote:
| Yes, and the part about Reagan.
| chuchurocka wrote:
| I teach data analytics and it's required reading on the first
| week. It doesn't soften the blow of throwing people in the CLI
| but provides perspective to why I am.
| hgyjnbdet wrote:
| Me: seems like my sort of thing.
|
| Me: navigate to linked website, see wall of text.
|
| Me: _clicks reading mode_
|
| Me: *193 - 245 minutes*
|
| Me: _bookmark to read later; probably not_
| yetihehe wrote:
| It's very engaging, please try reading it.
| sshine wrote:
| It's a short novel.
|
| Putting it in a browser window gives it bad odds. You can also
| listen to it:
|
| https://youtu.be/KpaUg6WwdzU
|
| Begins at 01:30, 25 minutes.
| boomskats wrote:
| > 25 minutes
|
| That link is only part 1 (of 7). It's still around 2 and a
| bit hours of listening in total.
| https://www.youtube.com/@robertreads4323/videos
| sshine wrote:
| Thanks for correcting me.
| boomskats wrote:
| Thanks for the link! I'm 3/7ths of the way through it.
| enugu wrote:
| You can skip ahead to his playful thesis > the universe
| emerging from the command line.
|
| _In his book The Life of the Cosmos, which everyone should
| read, Lee Smolin gives the best description I 've ever read of
| how our universe emerged from an uncannily precise balancing of
| different fundamental constants. The mass of the proton, the
| strength of gravity, the range of the weak nuclear force, and a
| few dozen other fundamental constants completely determine what
| sort of universe will emerge from a Big Bang. If these values
| had been even slightly different, the universe would have been
| a vast ocean of tepid gas or a hot knot of plasma or some other
| basically uninteresting thing--a dud, in other words. The only
| way to get a universe that's not a dud--that has stars, heavy
| elements, planets, and life--is to get the basic numbers just
| right. If there were some machine, somewhere, that could spit
| out universes with randomly chosen values for their fundamental
| constants, then for every universe like ours it would produce
| 10^229 duds.
|
| Though I haven't sat down and run the numbers on it, to me this
| seems comparable to the probability of making a Unix computer
| do something useful by logging into a tty and typing in command
| lines when you have forgotten all of the little options and
| keywords. Every time your right pinky slams that ENTER key, you
| are making another try. In some cases the operating system does
| nothing. In other cases it wipes out all of your files. In most
| cases it just gives you an error message. In other words, you
| get many duds. But sometimes, if you have it all just right,
| the computer grinds away for a while and then produces
| something like emacs. It actually generates complexity, which
| is Smolin's criterion for interestingness.
|
| Not only that, but it's beginning to look as if, once you get
| below a certain size--way below the level of quarks, down into
| the realm of string theory--the universe can't be described
| very well by physics as it has been practiced since the days of
| Newton. If you look at a small enough scale, you see processes
| that look almost computational in nature.
|
| I think that the message is very clear here: somewhere outside
| of and beyond our universe is an operating system, coded up
| over incalculable spans of time by some kind of hacker-
| demiurge. The cosmic operating system uses a command-line
| interface. It runs on something like a teletype, with lots of
| noise and heat; punched-out bits flutter down into its hopper
| like drifting stars. The demiurge sits at his teletype,
| pounding out one command line after another, specifying the
| values of fundamental constants of physics:
|
| universe -G 6.672e-11 -e 1.602e-19 -h 6.626e-34 -protonmass
| 1.673e-27....
|
| and when he's finished typing out the command line, his right
| pinky hesitates above the ENTER key for an aeon or two,
| wondering what's going to happen; then down it comes--and the
| WHACK you hear is another Big Bang._
| imiric wrote:
| I ran it through an LLM and asked it to summarize and answer
| questions about it. Worked great to get the gist.
| johnisgood wrote:
| I am curious, why is this comment being down-voted? I mean, I
| would like to hear an opinion against it (not that I care
| about the points).
| dijksterhuis wrote:
| > Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It
| never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| johnisgood wrote:
| I am just simply asking for the opinion of people who
| disagree with OP. I do not care about the down-vote per
| se, more so about the opinion of people who disagree
| indicated by the down-votes.
| imiric wrote:
| Because HN has a hate boner against "AI". :)
|
| The reality is that summarizing text and answering
| questions about it is one of the best use cases for what we
| currently call "AI".
| bregma wrote:
| Are you purposefully being ironic?
| inciampati wrote:
| I read this during my university graduation ceremonies. It was
| hidden in a fold in my robes. It was the most fitting thing I
| could have done, as I immediately changed my life direction and
| focused on exactly the ideas outlined in this work. My goal: move
| the world from the command line. I've almost managed to.
| throwaway211 wrote:
| I like the problem to the move away from IP Chains.
|
| We should move to the Command Table.
| kkfx wrote:
| To be (re)read together with the Unix Haters Handbook
| https://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf to realize that what we
| need is re-made LispM, Smalltalk workstations or the OS as a
| single application, framework opened down to the most low level
| part, in the user hands, fully end-user programmable,
| discoverable, and fully integrated. A 2D and even 3D/4D CLI as
| the UI, witch is the DocUIs with eventual 3D and video/multimedia
| elements.
|
| As a conceptual framework
| http://augmentingcognition.com/assets/Kay1977.pdf
| lproven wrote:
| _Riotous applause from the cheap seats_
| kkfx wrote:
| Thanks :-) but allow me to enlarge, in my poor English: "us"
| the westerns, we came from those who invented the IT, the
| modern industry. We are evidently in a declining phase.
| Evidently someone else try to emerge and actually one of the
| most prominent new power, China, emerge doing what we have
| done when we was at the top of the world in industrial,
| public research, education terms. Meaning such "technical
| model" works.
|
| Evidently the financial capitalism have worked for a certain
| period but does not work anymore. So, why keeping committing
| suicide? We have started to suicide with the WWI. We kept
| going with WWII and we continue now.
|
| We are still the leader for IT, and we know what does it
| work, the classic FLOSS/at least open IT model, the one where
| some sell iron not bits, the one where customers own their
| systems and bend them as they wish, the one where
| communication is not owned by some walled gardens but open
| like on Usenet, classic mails (as opposite to webmails,
| hiding the decentralized ability for most users who do not
| own the WebMUA). To continue with the China comparison I've
| recently bought some battery tools, very cheap crap but
| enough for domestic usage and I've observed that batteries
| have a standard connector, I can swap them from different
| brands issueless, batteries, chargers are "standard". I also
| own some high end domestic battery tools, who happen to have
| a damn nfc tag inside the battery tying it to the device,
| even if inside the battery are classic connected li-ion
| batteries. The same I observed for BEV, some friends and I
| have three Chinese BEV from different brands/models and they
| have a gazillion of common parts. So to say "open/standard
| pay back" yes, it might erode SOME OEMs margins, but pay back
| the society at a whole and as a result the OEM itself. The
| same is valid in software terms. My desktop is Emacs/EXWM, I
| use as a search&narrow framework consult/orderless/vertico,
| they simply "plug in" any other packages because the system
| is a unique application end-user programmable at runtime. You
| do not need to "specifically support" a package to integrate
| it. You do not need third party to explicitly support your
| package to use it together. And what we do instead? Our best
| to create walled gardens, we have had XMPP, SIP/RTP and now
| most are on Zoom/Teams/Meet/Slack/Skype/* all walled gardens.
| Even many push to substitute emails with some new colorful
| walled garden. Similarly any app try to add features someone
| else have since it's impossible just using it, like a sexp in
| a buffer.
|
| As a result modern IT from Unix where the user at least can
| combine simple tools with some IPCs in script we are limited
| by cut&paste, drag&drop and not much more. Anything is damn
| complicated because there are no shared data structure in a
| shared environment, but any "app" do everything on it's own,
| often with a gazillion of dependencies who have a gazillion
| of deps on their own, with a big load of parsers of any kind
| and even "some standard to pass data" (like JSON) who try to
| emerge but are still not a shared data structure in an unique
| integrated environment.
|
| All of this is the old Greenspun's tenth rule and actually is
| killing our IT innovation, killing one of the last sector we
| still rules, for the same issues that have killed our
| industry essentially.
| lproven wrote:
| I 100% agree, and your points about Chinese tools are
| particularly incisive.
|
| As an aside, but I think relevant and you might find it
| interesting:
|
| A decade or so I discovered Oberon, the last masterwork of
| the great genius of programming languages Niklaus "Bucky"
| Wirth. A complete OS, UI and compiler, in about four and a
| half thousand lines of code.
|
| I have it running in various forms.
|
| I introduced it to the Squeak Smalltalk community, and when
| I told them what I was looking for:
|
| << a relatively mature, high-performance, small OS
| underneath, delivering some degree of portability --
| something written in a type-safe, memory-managed language,
| with multiprocessor support and networking and so on
| already present, so that these things do not have to be
| implemented in the higher-level system. >>
|
| That is how I found Oberon. They told me such a thing did
| not and could not exist.
|
| I gave them some links and people were amazed.
|
| It seems deeply obscure in, as you say, the West.
|
| But I have found an active community working on it and
| developing it. It is in Russia.
|
| It may be that in other countries now the target of Western
| sanctions, we may inadvertently be fostering some very
| interesting tech developments...
| kkfx wrote:
| I know Oberon only by name, I've used (and honestly not
| loved it at all) some Pascal dialect back at high school,
| but back then was not real programming and was an
| introductory very bad organized course so it's hard to
| tell, I've encountered probably Oberon for a river
| navigation applications around 10 years ago but I wasn't
| really involved so I can't say much, I essentially do not
| know anything but the name, if you have some interesting
| links to share I'll skim them with pleasure.
|
| In more broad terms I do not put much attention in a
| specific programming language even if clearly an OS-
| single-application is tied to a specif programming
| language, in the sense that there are many, and they are
| many factions loving one and hating others, the point is
| offering something usable at user level, like "just type
| a sexp and execute it" also from an email, because
| integration means also an immense small diversity and
| heavy dialogues so innovation. With such model we can
| keep our supremacy and more important we can't lose it
| because essentially anything float in a common see.
|
| The main issue to reach such goal I think it's general
| cultural of the masses, today most peoples, many
| programmers included, do think that IT means computers,
| like saying that astronomy is the science of telescopes.
| Of course computers are like pen and paper, an essential
| tool, but they are a tool, the purpose of IT is
| _information_ and that 's not a specific technical task
| but a broad aspects involving essentially all
| disciplines. Until this is clear for anyone there is
| little hope people understand the need, power and issues
| of IT, they'll keep looking at the finger pointing the
| Moon instead of at the Moon.
|
| The rest came after, even the most basic computer skills
| came after because to learn we need to be motivated,
| learning "just because you have to" as a social rule is
| not productive.
| igouy wrote:
| > That is how I found Oberon. They told me such a thing
| did not and could not exist.
|
| Long ago:
|
| https://blackbox.oberon.org/
|
| https://github.com/excelsior-oss/xds
| mg wrote:
| The command line is still king.
|
| Whenever I see new coders struggle, it usually is because they:
| - Don't know the context of what they are executing
| - Don't know about the concept of input and output
|
| On the command line, the context is obvious. You are in the
| context. The working dir, the environment, everything is the same
| for you as it is for the thing you execute via ./mything.py.
|
| Input and output are also obvious. Input is what you type, output
| is what you see. Using pipes to redirect it comes naturally.
|
| Not being natively connected to context, input and output is
| often at the core of problems I see even senior programmers
| struggle with.
| pavlov wrote:
| This is such generic advice about computing, it's like saying:
|
| "To make a building, you need to have a foundation, something
| to keep the roof up, and a way for people to move inside."
| mg wrote:
| The analogy I would make is that living in the command line
| is like using a CAD program while living in IDEs is like
| using CorelDraw to design houses.
|
| CorelDraw feels more efficient because one quickly has what
| looks like a beautiful, colorful house on the screen. And
| then one does not understand why the doors don't work
| correctly.
| dakiol wrote:
| The more experience I accumulate, the more I rely on GUIs.
| Explanation: when I was younger I used exclusively the CLI and
| underestimated GUIs. Now I tend to appreciate GUIs and use them
| more.
| lucianbr wrote:
| If you're experienced with the command line, it's easy to use
| GUIs and get good results.
|
| If one starts with GUIs and doesn't really understand what is
| behind, then all kinds of trouble happen.
|
| So I guess, as with any tool, understanding is key.
| lukan wrote:
| Not all GUIs are just a graphical wrapper for a CLI. But in
| general sure, understanding the tech behind helps.
| lucianbr wrote:
| No doubt, if you're working in AutoCAD, there's no
| command line that you need to understand first.
|
| But then again, if you're working in AutoCAD, you'd never
| say "I used to work in CLI only, now I use GUIs more and
| more".
|
| Clearly they meant GUIs that have CLIs behind, or at
| least CLI alternatives.
| kalleboo wrote:
| AutoCAD is an unlucky choice of example here, because
| it's one of the few GUI drawing tools that actually does
| have a command line behind it that you have to understand
| sometimes! Look up a screenshot of AutoCAD and you can
| see the command prompt at the bottom of the window.
|
| And if you were using AutoCAD in the 80's you can say
| exactly that you used to use the CLI only!
| devjab wrote:
| I used to sort of like the Azure GUI (yes I'm a total
| psychopath), but then they changed it 9 billion times and now
| I just use the CLI. It's frankly often experiences like this
| which drives me back to the cli. I like Gitkraken, but the it
| does an update and forgets my SSO or it doesn't support a
| specific thing I need to do and then I'm using their console.
|
| I'm not really religious about anything, but I often end up
| going back to the CLI for a lot of things because it's just
| less of an annoyance.
| the_duke wrote:
| Can you give some examples? Which GUIs are you using?
| dakiol wrote:
| I have used git extensively in the terminal. But nowadays I
| see myself more and more relying on GUIs like the ones
| integrated in Intellij IDE, Source Tree, etc.
|
| Another example could be qemu and the GUIs that we have
| nowadays. One final example would be simply drag and
| dropping files via Finder instead of using cp/mv
| sandreas wrote:
| This. And it does not even exclude having a (T)UI. Modern
| terminal tools like neovim, lazygit, zellij, btop++ or yazi can
| do many things as window management, image previews and colors
| as well as having mouse support.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Are there any good tools to be able to ssh into a machine and
| preview images or render markdown directly in line with the
| cli?
| fragmede wrote:
| sixel support lets you display images to the command line,
| for terminal emulators that support it.
| xk3 wrote:
| > On the command line, the context is obvious. You are in the
| context
|
| While I share the opinion that the command line is _the one
| true way_ of computing, I don't think this is really all that
| true. Computers are alien. GUIs are alien. CLIs are alien.
| Everything is learned. Everything is experience. Everything is
| culture. Learning, experience, and culture blind us from the
| experience of the novice. This is "expert blindness".
|
| Why Western Designs Fail in Developing Countries
| https://youtu.be/CGRtyxEpoGg
|
| https://scholarslab.lib.virginia.edu/blog/novice-struggles-a...
| copperx wrote:
| More succinctly, "the only intuitive interface is the
| nipple."
| lukan wrote:
| Some babies actually do not have that intuition and rather
| bite and need time to learn.
| fanf2 wrote:
| Not even that. Newborns have to learn how to suckle, and
| their mother has to learn how to hold everything in the
| right positions so it can work. It's a tricky skill and
| many aren't successful even if they want to breastfeed.
| lamuswawir wrote:
| Newborns don't have to learn how to suckle. It's a
| reflex, called a suckling reflex. Lacking a suckling
| reflex is an indicator of disease. Basically a newborn
| suckles everything that goes into the mouth, nipple or
| not.
| rolisz wrote:
| Yes they have a suckling reflex, but they might not latch
| on correctly and then breastfeeding is extremely painful.
| lll-o-lll wrote:
| Are you a woman? Have you had children? Have you
| partnered a woman as your child and her cried through the
| night, both trying to make this "breastfeeding" thing
| work; both failing. "How can something so intrinsic to
| basic survival, be so hard!". And yet it is.
|
| Talk confidently when you have experience.
| anthk wrote:
| Sucking it's a reflex; the rest it's pseudoscience. Your
| personal anecdothes don't count.
| jstanley wrote:
| That doesn't negate the fact that newborns have a
| suckling reflex.
| lamuswawir wrote:
| Having a reflex and breastfeeding are two different
| things. The baby can have the reflex, but the mother has
| no milk or the latching technique is poor (as mentioned
| elsewhere in these comments). So the child not
| breastfeeding doesn't mean there is no reflex. And yes,
| the process can be painful and stressful to many mothers
| most especially first timers (experience also counts).
| johnisgood wrote:
| I mean yeah, you are right, it is learned, but "CLI is the
| one true way" for me because it is much more powerful than
| most GUIs I have seen. I am much more productive using the
| CLI, etc.
| heraldgeezer wrote:
| >Why Western Designs Fail in Developing Countries
|
| Why add this?
|
| Whats the solution then?
|
| We have already given so much in the western world.
| noufalibrahim wrote:
| True. All interfaces are abstractions and i think the command
| line interface is the best one we have. It gives you the
| maximum power.. It does have a steep but surmountable
| learning curve though and the effort is usually worth it
| given the ubiquitous nature and programmability.
| delusional wrote:
| I agree with you, but I think there's a caveat. The command
| line is king in Linux, BSD, MacOS, AIX, and to a lesser extent
| Windows. These operating systems were crafted from the bottom
| up with the commandline as a foundational layer. The idea of
| the context, of the "working directory", the "environment",
| were concepts that were lifted from that commandline centric
| world, into what we run now.
|
| I think Windows very much wanted to be something different with
| COM. Instead of starting a shell in the context of the program,
| you'd connect some external "shell" into the very object graph
| if your program to inspect it. It turns out to be very
| difficult, and Windows has largely retreated to commandline
| centric architecture, but I think there was some essential
| attempt at foundational innovation there.
|
| I would argue that the commandline has very much proven to be
| the best trade-off between being useful and being simple, but
| there is no saying if there exists some alternative.
| steve1977 wrote:
| > The command line is king in Linux, BSD, MacOS, AIX, and to
| a lesser extent Windows. These operating systems were crafted
| from the bottom up with the commandline as a foundational
| layer.
|
| This is definitively not true for macOS.
| skydhash wrote:
| MacOS is a very complete, very well funded desktop
| environment targeted towards the general user. You want
| anything extras and you land in applications using private
| apis and the command line.
| steve1977 wrote:
| The command line is not a "foundational layer" in macOS,
| that was my point. It exists on the same layer as the GUI
| does.
| thesuperbigfrog wrote:
| The foundation of MacOS is a fully-compliant Unix:
|
| https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/apple.htm
|
| The GUI is built on top of the Unix foundation and does
| not stand alone or work without it.
|
| The 'FoxTrot' comic made a big deal about this not long
| after Mac OS X was released:
|
| https://www.gocomics.com/foxtrot/2002/02/25
| steve1977 wrote:
| The foundation of macOS _contains_ elements of UNIX (or
| rather BSD) and the OS is UNIX certified, I'm fully aware
| of that. But these are two different things.
|
| For one thing, UNIX != command line.
|
| In the same vein, Windows NT is not based on DOS anymore,
| even if it has a command line which resembles (parts of)
| DOS.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| Not every version of MacOS. Classic MacOS, System 1-7 and
| MacOS 8-9, were definitely not crafted with the command line
| environment as a foundational layer. Using it was like being
| wrapped in several layers of bubble wrap. You were trapped in
| the GUI and if you wanted to do something the GUI didn't
| allow for, you were "using it wrong".
| jasode wrote:
| _> On the command line, the context is obvious. _
|
| But CLI contexts are only obvious _if the computer user is
| already familiar with the CLI_ which biases the learned mind to
| perceive things as obvious when they really are not.
|
| A lot of CLI commands syntax are based on _position_ instead of
| explicit argument names.
|
| E.g. creating file system links via CLI has opposite syntax
| positions in Linux vs Windows: - Linux: ln
| srcfile targetlink - Windows : mklink targetlink
| srcfile
|
| If one goes back & forth between the 2 operating systems, it's
| easy to mis-type the wrong syntax _because the CLI doesn 't
| make it obvious_. On the other hand, using a GUI file browser
| like Ubuntu Nautlius or Windows Explorer lets a novice create
| links ("shortcuts") without memorizing CLI syntax.
|
| This gap of knowledge is also why there is copy&paste cargo-
| culting of inscrutable ffmpeg, git, rsync, etc commands.
|
| E.g. using ffmpeg to covert a DVD to mp4 by manually
| concatenating *.VOB files has very cumbersome and error-prone
| syntax. It's easier to use a visual GUI like Handbrake to click
| and choose the specific title/chapters to convert.
|
| CLI vs GUI superiority depends on the task and the knowledge
| level of the user.
| tjoff wrote:
| Context isn't the same as syntax?
|
| Yes, command line suffers from discoverability of which
| different applications (such as ln/mklink) may not be
| consistent.
|
| It is one of the bigger problems (imho) of the cli but it
| doesn't go against GPs point.
|
| The command line does have a learning curve (partly because
| of the above), but it is also quite rewarding.
| sgc wrote:
| When I start typing a formula in LibreOffice Calc, there is
| a popup showing possible matching functions, then when I
| choose the function, the popup shows the required syntax
| for the function and where I currently am within that
| syntax. A bash plugin that would do that would be an
| absolute game changer imho.
|
| The cli excels because it is extremely flexible, with far
| more options available than a set of buttons could ever
| display. But discoverability rounds down to 0, and there
| are footguns. It seems like spreadsheet software has found
| an almost drop in ui that would greatly enhance the cli.
| thinkmassive wrote:
| Tab completion can get you much of the way there.
| sgc wrote:
| it's not the same thing. Tab completion is useful and
| will complete something you know of. But it does not help
| you discover something you don't know, or provide you the
| syntax of the command after it is entered. The problem I
| would like to solve is discoverability.
|
| It's a 3 part problem: available commands, their options,
| their syntax. Part one would need to capture prompt input
| before enter was hit using solutions similar to those
| found at [1] perhaps the most useful but least complete
| one there is the one that uses apropos so something like
| `apropos -s 1 '' | sort | grep calc | less`. Similar
| solutions would be required for two and three. The
| roughest and easiest prototype would probably be two tabs
| in a split screen view, which would allow for selection
| of displayed matches to then modify the prompt creating
| those matches in the other tab. But Calc style popups
| directly attached to your cursor would be more useful
| still.
|
| [1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/948008/linux-
| command-to-...
| fragmede wrote:
| These days it's easier to ask ChatGPT for the ffmpeg command
| line to do the thing you want, imo.
| anthk wrote:
| When some big shit hits the fan either with ChatGPT or
| internet connections, the only people able to fix systems
| without an internet connection will be us, the millenials.
|
| The rest will be prompty fired in the spot.
| Gormo wrote:
| I've found that as far as generational cohorts go, the
| most adept people are the late Gen-Xers and very early
| Millenials -- the people who grew up surrounded by C64s
| and Apple IIs and later had to fiddle with their
| config.sys and autoexec.bat files to get their game to
| fit into conventional memory.
|
| People whose first exposure to computing was in the
| mid-'90s or later seem to have less depth of
| understanding of the fundamentals and less experiencing
| tinkering and using process of elimination to solve
| problems. I started encountering people who didn't
| understand certain fundamental concepts and had no
| exposure to the CLI, but still had CS degrees and were
| applying for developer positions, about 15 years ago.
| anthk wrote:
| Yeah, these too. But lots of millenials learnt with
| RedHat, Debian and they knew a bit of DOS for some issues
| with Windows 98 and potential recovering from disasters.
| Still, far more able than the ChatGPT aided people
| blindly pasting commands into a shell being a recipe for
| a huge disaster.
| Gormo wrote:
| Everything is "easy" when someone else is doing it for you.
| Results are best when you develop and apply your own
| expertise to a problem, but it's not feasible to do that
| for every problem domain -- relying on others is often
| important.
|
| I'ts just that if I'm going to rely on someone else, I'd
| prefer for that someone else to be one of the people who
| _has_ developed and applied their own expertise to that
| problem domain, rather than a statistical model that only
| actually knows how likely words are to appear in proximity
| to each other, and has no capacity to validate its
| probabilistic inferences against the outside world.
| zoky wrote:
| > On the command line, the context is obvious.
|
| You sound like someone who never tried to write a cronjob
| script...
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| "Don't know about the concept of input and output"
|
| Wow, that seems quite fundamental. Computing 101.
|
| I'm not a "coder" and I spend "99%" of time on the command
| line. Because I prefer it. Ever since the 80s when I first used
| a VAX.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| The command line is king, but sometimes the king is mad. Which
| is to say, it can be difficult to work with the monarchy when
| _the syntax is shit_. And there 's a lot of bad syntax out
| there: overly cute, so terse as to be cryptographic, the
| straight-up baffling ...
|
| Outside of the syntax (which seems to live forever), you have
| things like non-sane defaults, obscurantist man pages ... the
| list goes on.
| fragmede wrote:
| the ability to hit up and edit and retry is such a redeeming
| feature. repeating the same actions in a GUI with no keyboard
| shortcuts is an exercise in frustration.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| GUIs can have keyboard shortcuts. Have you honestly never
| pressed Alt+F, x to exit a GUI program or Ctrl+S to save a
| document in a GUI editor, or Ctrl+Tab to switch tabs in a
| GUI browser or Tab to move focus between fields, or the
| context-menu button next to Alt Gr and then a keyboard
| accelerator key for the menu, or Ctrl+C then Ctrl-P or
| anything?
|
| Repeating the same actions in a CLI with no readline is an
| exercise in frustration, but ... that's not what happens
| most of the time.
| skydhash wrote:
| > the syntax is shit
|
| When you're typing a lot, you really don't want to do a lot
| of typing for each step. And the shell scripts were for
| automating some process, not solving a particular problem
| (you use a programming language for that). The workflow is to
| have the references ready in case you forgot something.
|
| That brings up the man pages, which can varies in quality,
| but, for most software I've used, tend to be comprehensive.
| But they assume that you're knowledgeable. If you're not,
| take some time to read a book about system administration
| (users, processes, files permissions,...).
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I'm not sure if I have O'Reilly's _System Administration_
| book. I used to get pre-prints back in the early nineties
| when they were still quite new. In any case, yes, I have
| read and I have Been Around.
|
| And I still think that we can improve. More over, we ought
| to improve.
| steve1977 wrote:
| Oh believe me, I wish what you wrote was true, but it isn't.
|
| I've seen people think they have a specific Python environment
| active just because they were in their project's directory on
| the command line.
|
| I've seen people not understand that "python -m pip" is a
| command and even if they are in a directory which has "python"
| in its name, they still have to type "python" for that command.
|
| PS: The command line might even be an emperor. And the emperor
| could be naked...
| fragmede wrote:
| > I've seen people think they have a specific Python
| environment active just because they were in their project's
| directory on the command line.
|
| I wrote python-wool as a simple wrapper to python to make
| that true because it's just easier that way. Direnv can also
| be configured to do that as well.
|
| http://GitHub.com/fragmede/python-wool
| vegabook wrote:
| Reductio ad absurdum: we should all just use an interactive
| assembler. Then you really are "in the context".
|
| There is a level of abstraction that makes sense. What level
| that is is dependent on your objectives.
| skydhash wrote:
| My first real programming experiences was done through the
| browser's console (JavaScript) and IDLE's REPL (Python). The
| short feedback cycle works wonder for understanding instead
| of struggling to the multistep process of C compilation or
| Java verbosity. I tried my hands at reverse engineering and
| using a dissassembler like IDA also gives the same immediacy
| feeling. Great DX for me is either a good debugger or a
| proper REPL whatever the abstraction level.
| vegabook wrote:
| Agreed. When writing the comment I returned seconds later
| and added the word "interactive".
| richrichie wrote:
| > the multistep process of C compilation
|
| it can be a single make command
| teddyh wrote:
| DDT, the shell for the ITS operating system, was also an
| assembly-level debugger.
| fragmede wrote:
| its unsung strength is in having multiple terminal windows and
| a browser open, and the simplicity of being able to hit up and
| being able to edit and then retry a failed command. I can't do
| that in Photoshop.
| bloopernova wrote:
| Yep, I ran a short "introduction to the command line" course
| for the devs in my team. Afterwards, I noticed that their usage
| of the vscode terminal was much higher, and folks were more
| comfortable exploring on their own.
|
| Quick outline of the course, in case anyone wants a starting
| point: * Introduction Quick history of
| Unix * When you log in Difference between
| login and interactive shells System shell files vs user
| shell files .zshenv for environment variables like
| PATH, EDITOR, and PAGER .zprofile for login shells, we
| don't use it .zshrc for interactive shells Your
| login files are scripts, and can have anything in them
| * Moving Around ** Where am I? pwd = "print
| working directory" stored in variable $PWD
| Confusingly, also called current working directory, so you may
| see CWD or cwd mentioned ** What is here? ls
| ls -al ls -alt . prefix to filenames makes them
| hidden . is also the current directory! ..
| means the parent directory file tells you what
| something is cat displays a file code opens it
| in vscode ** Finding my way around cd
| cd - dirs | sed -e $'s/ /\\\n/g' ** Getting
| Help From The Man man 1 zshbuiltins manpage
| sections ** PATH echo $PATH | sed -e
| $'s/:/\\\n/g' zshenv PATH setting which tells
| you what will be run ** Environment Variables
| env | sort EDITOR variable ** History
| ctrl-r vs up arrow ** Permissions Making
| something executable ** Prompts zsh
| promptinit zsh prompt -l ** Pipes and
| Redirection Iterate to show how pipes work cat
| ~/.zshrc | grep PATH ls -al > ~/.tmp/ls-output.txt
| ** Commands *** BSD vs GNU commands BSD are
| supplied by Apple, and Apple often uses old versions
| GNU are installed via homebrew, and match those commands
| available in Linux
| samatman wrote:
| > _Input and output are also obvious. Input is what you type,
| output is what you see._
|
| Input maybe, although realizing that instead of typing, you can
| pipe, is a major conceptual breakthrough when new users are
| learning to work the command line.
|
| But output? The existence of stdout and stderr as two sources
| of text with no visible distinction is _highly nonobvious_ and
| continues to trip me up in practical situations to this very
| day.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| In the beginning was a switch.
| xg15 wrote:
| > _Buyer: "But this dealership has mechanics on staff. If
| something goes wrong with my station wagon, I can take a day off
| work, bring it here, and pay them to work on it while I sit in
| the waiting room for hours, listening to elevator music."
|
| Bullhorn: "But if you accept one of our free tanks we will send
| volunteers to your house to fix it for free while you sleep!"_
|
| Did Linux distros actually offer support at some point? (By what
| I assume would be some project contributor ssh-ing into your
| machine)
|
| My impression was always the arguments were more like "Well yes,
| but we have this literal building full of technical manuals that
| describe every bolt and screw of your tank - and we can give you
| a copy of all of them for free! And think about it - after you
| have taken some modest effort to read and learn all of them by
| heart, you'll be able to fix and even modify your tank all on
| your own! No more dependence on crooked car dealers! And if you
| need help, we have monthly community meetups you can attend and
| talk with people just as tank-crazy as you are! (please only
| attend if you're sufficiently tank-crazy, and PLEASE only after
| you read the manuals)"
|
| (This was decades ago, the situation has gotten significantly
| better today)
| delusional wrote:
| > Did Linux distros actually offer support at some point? (By
| what I assume would be some project contributor ssh-ing into
| your machine)
|
| I don't think that was the intended implication. I think the
| analogy is more akin to: "If send us a bug report, we'll fix it
| and ship a new version that you can download and use for free."
| In the olden days, you'd have to buy a new version of
| commercial software if it didn't work for your machine,
| complementary patches were rare.
| jmclnx wrote:
| Depends on where you lived. In the early days there were lots
| of LUGs in some areas, usually in college areas, but some
| would be hosted at a few Companies.
|
| I think DEC had one or two. And you could find someone who
| would meet you somewhere to help you out, it was an exciting
| time. Also there were lots of install fests for Linux.
|
| Most activity took place on USENET, so getting help was
| rather easy.
|
| For example, I had asked how I could connect 2 monitors to my
| 386SX, one controlled by a VGA card, the other via a mono-
| card, each monitor with a couple of VTs. That was doable with
| Coherent on install. A day later I got a patch.
|
| Things moved very quickly back then :)
| lukan wrote:
| "By what I assume would be some project contributor ssh-ing
| into your machine"
|
| Who would want that?
|
| "Stay away from my house, you freak!" would be the normal
| reaction. Unless some serious trust is developed, I would not
| let people into my house while I sleep.
|
| Also the actual usual reaction would have been more like: "hey
| it is open source, you can fix anything on your tank yourself"
|
| You need a new module to connect with your other devices, just
| build it yourself, no big deal!
| heraldgeezer wrote:
| Companies want that when prod stops.
| xg15 wrote:
| I know you shouldn't look too closely at analogies, but I
| think there is an interesting inconsistency in the "car
| dealerships" story:
|
| The tank people offer to send someone to look into the _car_
| (rsp. tank) but the buyer rejects them from entering their
| _house_.
|
| That's significant, because a car is much less private than a
| house. In the real world, if my car had an issue, it would be
| perfectly reasonable to give it into the hands of a mechanic,
| even if I don't know them personally. (And evidently the
| reputation of the dealership isn't the deciding factor
| either, otherwise all the independent repair shops wouldn't
| exist)
|
| On the other hand, I'd be much more wary to let strangers
| into my _house_ without supervision, because I have far more
| private and valuable possessions there than in my car.
|
| So the question is whether computers are more like cars or
| like houses. I'd argue, they sort of blur the line and have
| definitely moved closer to "house" in the last decades. But
| it might have been different back then.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| I'd say the reputation of dealerships is _why_ independent
| repair shops exist. :)
| charonn0 wrote:
| Obviously a computer is like an an RV.
| xg15 wrote:
| It might also be a bus.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| That nitpick over car/house analogies is rapidly breaking
| down as cars have increased compute and storage themselves,
| and integrate with other personal electronics, most
| especially "smart" phones.
|
| Some recent discussion on the border phone search ruling:
|
| <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41084384>
| bregma wrote:
| > Did Linux distros actually offer support at some point?
|
| Ever wonder how Red Hat became a billion-dollar company before
| it was bought by IBM, and now makes up a huge segment of IBM's
| revenue stream?
|
| Have you noticed SuSE is still around?
|
| Have you ever speculated on how Canonical keeps its lights on?
|
| Paid support, my naive friend. Linux support is big business
| and is what keeps the popular distros alive.
| xg15 wrote:
| Good point!
| willguest wrote:
| Shouldn't this be written in Latin?
| layer8 wrote:
| Hebrew, you mean?
| qubex wrote:
| I've got this in soft-cover. I think I read it back before the
| turn of the millennium. As a BeOS aficionado I loved the
| reference to batmobiles.
| danielovichdk wrote:
| Yes. Cults are real. At the same time very telling. Some people
| really believe they are better because they have a different
| machine than someone else. And that shit runs deep.
| marmot777 wrote:
| Because I had to read this before falling asleep I had audio
| going out 2x so it sounds like a fifties cartoon.
| pavlov wrote:
| The CLI has a massive blind spot in today's operating systems: it
| knows nothing useful about events.
|
| Yet events are the primary way anything happens on a computer,
| whether it's a user system or a server.
| fock wrote:
| huh? DBUS is very much a thing and has CLI-tooling?
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Annoying though it may be, you can run a program in the
| background that can write to your open terminal.
|
| Just in userspace you have; dmesg -w
| tail -f /var/log/messages
|
| There's also dbus to monitor on Linux systems and a lot of
| kernel hook tricks you can use to get a message pop up if an
| event happens.
|
| Because it gets annoying to have a process splurge notification
| stuff to a term you are working in, that's why you have info-
| bars which many terminal emulators support.
| skydhash wrote:
| In unix world, everything is a file, so you can poll the file
| waiting for something to happen. And there's the whole signal
| thing and dbus exists.
| pavlov wrote:
| Yeah, these are the event paradigms that I meant by "nothing
| useful."
|
| Files are not a good abstraction for events. Signals are
| broken in many ways. And DBus is both extremely clunky to use
| and non-portable.
|
| There isn't a built-in event paradigm similar to how streams
| and pipes are an integral part of the Unix-style CLI.
| dandanua wrote:
| > Files are not a good abstraction for events
|
| Why is that? On the low level everything is a state of
| electronic cells. Files address those cells in a suitable
| fashion. Modern programming abstractions such as
| async/await are very simple, but fail miserably if you need
| something really complex and efficient.
| anthk wrote:
| You mean, like entr triggering commands?
| johnklos wrote:
| I can't even understand this. How does the CLI relate to
| events? Are you saying that all servers secretly have an
| invisible GUI and handle events there?
|
| This just seems like an odd non sequitur.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| For if your browser isn't okay with the long lines;
|
| wget -O - https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs81n/command.txt |
| nroff | less
| ryandv wrote:
| The section on "THE INTERFACE CULTURE" is critical to understand
| in today's digital media landscape. Disney's Animal Kingdom is to
| the written works of Lewis Carroll and J.M. Barrie as the GUI is
| to the command-line interface. The message of one medium is
| audiovisual spectacle and immersive experience; the other, cold
| intellectualism demanding participation from the reader to paint
| a picture in his mind's eye through the interpretation of raw
| text, words on a screen, or a piece of paper.
| But this is precisely the same as what is lost in the transition
| from the command-line interface to the GUI.
| Why are we rejecting explicit word-based interfaces, and
| embracing graphical or sensorial ones--a trend that
| accounts for the success of both Microsoft and Disney?
| But we have lost touch with those intellectuals, and with
| anything like intellectualism, even to the point of not
| reading books any more, though we are literate.
|
| Elsewhere [0] I have called this concept "post-literacy," and
| this theme pervades much of Stephenson's work - highly
| technologically advanced societies outfitted with molecular
| assemblers and metaverses, populated by illiterate masses who
| mostly get by through the use of pictographs and hieroglyphic
| languages (emoji, anyone?). Literacy is for the monks who,
| cloistered away in their monasteries, still scribble ink
| scratchings on dead trees and ponder "useless" philosophical
| quandaries.
|
| The structure of modern audiovisual media lends itself to the
| immediate application of implicit bias. On IRC, in the days of
| 56k before bandwidth and computer networks had developed to the
| point of being able to deliver low-latency, high definition audio
| and video, perhaps even for "real-time" videoconferencing, most
| of your interactions with others online was mediated through the
| written word. Nowhere here, unless some party chooses to disclose
| it, do race, gender, accent, physical appearance, or otherwise,
| enter into the picture and possibly cloud your judgment of who a
| person is - or, more importantly, the weight of their words, and
| whether or not they are correct, or at least insightful; consider
| Turing's "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" paper which first
| introduced what is now called the "Turing test," and how it was
| designed to be conducted purely over textual media as a written
| conversation, so as to avoid influencing through other channels
| the interrogator's judgment of who is the man, and who is the
| machine. The only real problem is that anyone
| who has no culture, other than this global monoculture,
| is completely screwed. Anyone who grows up watching TV,
| never sees any religion or philosophy, is raised in an atmosphere
| of moral relativism, learns about civics from watching
| bimbo eruptions on network TV news, and attends a
| university where postmodernists vie to outdo each other
| in demolishing traditional notions of truth and quality, is going
| to come out into the world as one pretty feckless human
| being.
|
| Moreover, the confusion of symbols for reality, the precession of
| digitized, audiovisual content from a mere representation to
| more-than-real, digital hyperreality (since truth and God are all
| dead and everything is merely a consensual societal
| hallucination), leads people to mistake pixels on a screen for
| actual objects; narrative and spin for truth; influencers,
| videos, and YouTube personalities for actual people; or words
| from ChatGPT as real wisdom and insight - much in the same way
| that Searle's so-called "Chinese room" masquerades as an actual
| native speaker of Mandarin or Cantonese: "What we're really
| buying is a system of metaphors. And--much more important--what
| we're buying into is the underlying assumption that metaphors are
| a good way to deal with the world." So many
| ignorant people could be dangerous if they got pointed in the
| wrong direction, and so we've evolved a popular culture
| that is (a) almost unbelievably infectious and (b)
| neuters every person who gets infected by it, by
| rendering them unwilling to make judgments and incapable of
| taking stands. It simply is the case that we
| are way too busy, nowadays, to comprehend everything in
| detail.
|
| The structure of modern short-form, upvote-driven media, lends
| itself to the production of short-form messages and takes with
| laughably small upper bounds on the amount of information they
| can contain. In a manner reminiscent of "you are what you eat,"
| you think similarly to the forms of media you consume - and one
| who consumes primarily short-form media will produce short-form
| thoughts bereft of nuance and critical thinking, and additionally
| suffer from all the deficits in attention span we have heard of
| as the next braindead 10-second short or reel robs you of your
| concentration, and the next, and the next...
|
| Beyond the infectious slot machine-like dopamine gratification of
| the pull-to-refresh and the infinite doomscroll, the downvote has
| become a frighteningly effective means of squashing heterodoxy
| and dissent; it is only those messages that are approved of and
| given assent to by the masses that become visible on the medium.
| Those who take a principled stand are immediately squashed down
| by the downvote mob, or worse, suffer from severe censure and
| invective at the hands of those zealous enforcers of orthodoxy.
| The downvote mechanism is reminiscent of the three "filters"
| Chomsky wrote of when he was discussing the mass media in
| "Manufacturing Consent," and the way advertisers, government, and
| capital all control and filter what content is disseminated to
| media consumers.
|
| The message of modern, audiovisual, short-form, upvote-driven
| social media is bias and group compliance bereft of nuance. If
| you want to produce and consume novel ideas you are better served
| by media based on the written word.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39990133
| ColinWright wrote:
| This is instructive:
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| One major advantage of the CLI is that instructions/fixes etc are
| very concise and can be easily communicated. If someone has a
| Linux system that needs a known fix, then it's trivial to send
| someone the commands to copy/paste into a terminal. However, if
| there's a known fix for a graphical program, then it suddenly
| becomes much harder to communicate - do you go for a textual
| instruction (e.g. click on the hamburger menu, then choose
| "preferences"...), or a series of screenshots along with some
| text?
| anthomtb wrote:
| I think your trailing question is a hypothetical but to answer:
|
| Screenshots along with text, then use Microsoft Paint to mark
| up the screen shots. For example, circling the appropriate menu
| option in a thick red line. Sadly, I do not know how to
| graphically convey the double-click operation.
|
| Its a time consuming and error prone process, best used if the
| buggy GUI application is abandonware. Otherwise, the new
| version will have the same bug or non-intuitive process but the
| GUI will be unrecognizable. Probably because some manager,
| somewhere, read too many HN articles and decided a user-facing
| refactor was the most important thing they could possibly do.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| You raise a good point about GUIs changing over time.
| Obviously, CLIs can change, but that happens less often and
| is usually in response to a poorly thought out first attempt
| at providing functionality (or when additional functionality
| is bolted on).
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Scripts are UI glue in more than one sense.
|
| The usual interpretation is that scripts glue together
| system commands that don't otherwise incorporate one
| another. This is tremendously useful and is by itself a
| huge advantage over GUIs.
|
| But the second sense is that _vast libraries of scripts
| keep developers bound to their previous UI promises_. You
| _don 't_ capriciously change command-line options without
| raising all kinds of ire. I've seen GNU tools (tar comes to
| mind) in which options have been "deprecated" for _decades_
| , yet are still available. I seem to recall a _very_ small
| number of cases where options had their senses entirely
| inverted, to much protest, and ultimately abandonment of
| those tools. In other cases you 've got generations of
| programs which support backwards-compatible options with
| precursors: exim and postfix with sendmail, ssh with rsh,
| alpine with pine, off the top of my head. Developer
| headspace and script compatibility are _valuable_.
|
| On that note, whilst I find the *BSD's extreme conservatism
| annoying myself, I can appreciate that it _does_ lead to
| increased consistency over time as compared with GNU
| userland.
| gregw2 wrote:
| Agreed. Poor scripting/replay inherently limits the GUI.
|
| That said, the best late 90s expression of the core advantage
| of the GUI over the TUI/CLI is that it demands less of the
| user:
|
| "recognize and click" vs
|
| "remember and type"
|
| That seems very fundamental to me.
|
| I have not seen as succinct expression of tradeoffs for
| V(oice)UI or L(LM)UIs
| dsubburam wrote:
| How about the new kid on the block here, the chat interface?
| Neither "recognize and click" nor "remember and type", esp.
| if done over voice.
|
| Maybe the chat interface does away with the first half of the
| GUI/CLI schemes, skipping over learning the affordance part
| of the interface.
| K2h wrote:
| On windows, steps recorder can be useful.
| https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/record-steps-to-...
| gumby wrote:
| Or even write a script which is just those commands. Meanwhile
| every step a user as to do is an opportunity to cause a _new
| and different_ problem.
| limit499karma wrote:
| This seems to deny the possibility of equivalence of any
| sequence of actions taken in a bounded spaces of entities
| (named widgets thus type:id) and actions to another
| 'representation' (e.g. text): {
| select[i]@dropdown:states > click@button:submit }
|
| The fact that we don't have this (yet) does not mean it is not
| possible. In fact, given that the current darling of tech LLMs
| can 'compute visually' based on tokens (text) should make it
| clear that any 'representation' can ultimately be encoded in
| text.
|
| So a 'record' feature on GUI 'a' can create action encoding
| that can be emailed to your peer looking at GUI 'b' and
| 'pasted'.
| wmf wrote:
| MacOS kind of had this with AppleScript, including recording.
| It's a little disappointing that it isn't widespread now but
| I realize that demand for GUI automation is extremely niche.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| The capitalist system loves the CLI.
|
| That complicated series of commands you just ran? Copy and paste
| them into the Jira ticket so the junior employee who makes half
| your salary can run them next time.
| yakireev wrote:
| _> Copy and paste them into the Jira ticket so the junior
| employee who makes half your salary can run them next time._
|
| Or, more likely: so that you yourself can remember what you did
| the next time the problem arises. Or your colleague, who is
| senior, but does not know this part of the codebase or infra
| well. Heck, you can even write a shell script, automate things
| and have your productivity increased!
|
| These things will be just as true and useful in some communist
| FOSS context as they are in a capitalist system.
| kstrauser wrote:
| It's not capitalist oppression to not want to reinvent the
| wheel every time.
|
| If the solution to a problem is as simple as "copy and paste
| this command", I _want_ to hand that off to a junior employee
| so I can go do other things that require more creativity.
| bee_rider wrote:
| > Yet now the company that Gates and Allen founded is selling
| operating systems like Gillette sells razor blades. New releases
| of operating systems are launched as if they were Hollywood
| blockbusters, with celebrity endorsements, talk show appearances,
| and world tours.
|
| I was a kid at the time, but did many people actually _buy_
| windows? I know about the ad-thing where the cast of Friends or
| whatever bought windows 95, but as I recall even back then the OS
| just came with the device. The only exception was OSX, which was
| a "Big Deal," even non-technical people downloaded it.
|
| Anyway, it is funny to see this in retrospect. Nowadays,
| operating systems have become so commoditized that you can't even
| make a business selling them.
|
| I love Linux but his description is quite optimistic.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| > I was a kid at the time, but did many people actually buy
| windows?
|
| Yep! Windows did indeed come with machines, but the _upgrades_
| were always a big seller. I remember when Windows 3.1 hit the
| shelves and seemed to be everywhere. Same with Windows 95 but
| that one was a tougher upgrade because of the increased system
| requirements.
| plasticchris wrote:
| Yes - people bought it to upgrade, as the step up from dos to
| 3.1 to win95 was huge.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Absolutely -- yes Windows came with your PC, but you'd buy the
| new version as a (cheaper) upgrade if you didn't want to wait
| until the next PC you bought.
|
| Today new OS versions aren't such a big deal, but when Windows
| 95 came out, and then XP, they were huge, with total interface
| redesigns.
|
| On the other hand, I don't think people went out of their way
| as much to buy smaller upgrades like Windows 98.
| Shawnj2 wrote:
| I think the fact that OS updates are free now kinda killed a
| lot of the marketing/promotion since most consumers will only
| update if their computer is old.
| layer8 wrote:
| I actually bought Windows 95 shrink-wrapped in store, because I
| was so excited about the new UI, for my previously DOS-only
| 486DX. Also OS/2 a bit later.
| giantrobot wrote:
| > I was a kid at the time, but did many people actually buy
| windows?
|
| Definitely. A new boxed OS version would often be the only
| updates anyone ever applied to their system. Even if you had
| Internet access, dial-up speeds and limited disk space meant
| downloading OS updates was often impractical. Even relatively
| small updates took forever to download.
|
| There was also the relative costs of a computer. A $2,000
| computer in 1995 would be about $4,000 in today dollars. Buying
| an OS update would be a relatively inexpensive way to upgrade
| the capabilities of your expensive computer without completely
| replacing it. Going from some Windows 3.1 release to Windows 95
| would have been a nice upgrade in system stability for many
| people. Certainly not everyone but for many.
| shostack wrote:
| It feels like while the marketing of launches may still be like
| that, it is purely to usher along adoption of the target future
| state which seems to be doing away with versions and having you
| simply locked in to forever paying an ever-increasing
| subscription fee to continue to use your computer in addition
| to data collection which can be separately monetized.
|
| This is markedly different from how it was in the past when
| they needed people to get up, go to a store, and buy the disc
| containing the new version of the OS.
| simonmysun wrote:
| I just wrote a command line interface of LLMs in (almost) pure
| Bash[1]. I endorse the future of LLMs because of the points in
| this article. People talk to LLMs the same way we talk to CLI
| shells, and everything is plain text based (It's Unix philosophy!
| ). I should've read this earlier to get more ideas before writing
| the CLI client.
|
| [1]: https://github.com/simonmysun/ell
| jart wrote:
| > It is commonly understood, even by technically unsophisticated
| computer users, that if you have a piece of software that works
| on your Macintosh, and you move it over onto a Windows machine,
| it will not run. That this would, in fact, be a laughable and
| idiotic mistake, like nailing horseshoes to the tires of a Buick.
|
| Not anymore. https://justine.lol/ape.html
| kaladin_1 wrote:
| Thanks for posting. A very interesting read. This is my first
| time seeing this well written piece. Written in a text file, sign
| of his distrust for software that mangle your ASCII :)
| rrnechmech wrote:
| This is timeless
| almog wrote:
| I still remember one of the quotes from The Metaphor Shear
| chapter, where he tried to explain how he felt after some of his
| files on his Mac got corrupted to such degree that he just
| couldn't recover: "It was sort of like watching the girl you've
| been in love with for ten years get killed in a car wreck, and
| then attending her autopsy, and learning that underneath the
| clothes and makeup she was just flesh and blood."
| macleginn wrote:
| Using plain $LANGUAGE to communicate with LLMs is an interesting
| contender, which is even easier for end users than GUIs and even
| less precise and is further removed from the underlying
| computations. In spirit, it is definitely a step in the same
| general direction, which makes a lot of formulations in this
| article sharply prescient.
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _In the Beginning was the Command Line (1999)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37314225 - Aug 2023 (2
| comments)
|
| _In the Beginning Was the Command Line_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29373944 - Nov 2021 (4
| comments)
|
| _In the Beginning was the Command Line (1999)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24998305 - Nov 2020 (64
| comments)
|
| _In the beginning was the command line (1999) [pdf]_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20684764 - Aug 2019 (50
| comments)
|
| _In the Beginning Was the Command Line (1999)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16843739 - April 2018 (13
| comments)
|
| _In the Beginning Was the Command Line (1999)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12469797 - Sept 2016 (54
| comments)
|
| _In the beginning was the command line_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11385647 - March 2016 (1
| comment)
|
| _In the Beginning was the Command Line, by Neal Stephenson_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=408226 - Dec 2008 (12
| comments)
|
| _In the beginning was the command line by Neil Stephenson_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=95912 - Jan 2008 (5
| comments)
|
| _In the Beginning Was the Command Line_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47566 - Aug 2007 (2
| comments)
|
| (Reposts are fine after a year or so; links to past threads are
| just to satisfy extra-curious readers. In the case of perennials
| like this one, it's good to have a new discussion every once in a
| while so newer user cohorts learn what the classics are.)
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